


Ceratias

by Innsmouth



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Stockholm Syndrome, consent issues later on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:42:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innsmouth/pseuds/Innsmouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Cut you a deal, gillfrond,” she says, leaning in close. Her breath smells of wine and fish, cloying. “You don’t act like a beach, and I don’t let you keel over and die. Hell, I might even take you for a walk sometime if you play reel nice. You stay nasty, you fucked.” The pupils of her eyes have expanded to fat black ellipses in the gloom; it makes her look eager, almost hungry. “We clear?”</p><p>Wherein Roxy Lalonde falls into the clutches of Her Imperious Condescension, fails spectacularly at resistance, and discovers that she's in some very deep water indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ceratias

At first, you rage. You scream and swear and batter the door of your cell until your knuckles bleed and one of your toenails blackens and falls off in your sneaker. Predictably, your efforts come to nothing, and you limp over to a corner to sulk and lick your wounds. All that you’ve really accomplished in your frenzy is to leave reddish smears and spatter on the surface of the steel, a Jackson Pollock abstract sketched out in blood and thwarted fury.  
  
The bruises from the witch’s fingers still linger on your wrist when you glance down to check, a taunting testament to the fact that you were so easily overpowered. It took her, what, all of five seconds to have that goddamn cat zap you into her clutches? Jesus, you are so fucking useless. You clench your aching fist and try to make the marks move in time with the flexing of your tendons, to no avail.  
  
You like them, in a vicious sort of way. They make you angry, and if you’re angry, you aren’t despairing. Despair will eat you alive.  
  
No one comes by to feed you, and you drift into an uneasy sleep with your stomach still rumbling its discontent. Such deprivation is hardly unusual for you; for fuck’s sake, you were slowly dying of malnutrition before the game as you eked out an existence at the end of the world. Shooting down skinny seabirds and snatching pumpkins from four centuries away only got you so far, and you are still a scrawny mess of bone and sinew even after months spent gorging yourself on Jane’s cooking. You can survive this. A day without food hasn’t killed you before, and it won’t now.  
  
At least, that’s what you think until you wake and sleep a second time without being fed. After that, you begin to have your doubts. What if the Batterwitch has left you here to rot? It would certainly prove less of a hassle than having to chase you down and skewer you like she did your mother.  
  
This is bullshit. You’re a fucking hero. You can’t kick the bucket from piddling shit like a couple of missed meals, unless you’re starving yourself to feed some orphans or something. Then again, fuck orphans. Nobody ever did anything like that for you, and you’re about as parentless as somebody can get.  
  
Fuck ‘em. Just fuck ‘em.  
  
You sit in your dimly-lit cell with your arms wrapped loosely around your calves and your chin propped on your knees as you wait to either be fed or die. The odds are pretty close on which one it’s going to be.  
  
After what feels like several hours (like hell if you actually know, your sense of time is totally shot by now) the thin slot in the door clangs open, and your paltry repast rattles through on a tray. You wait until the crisp clacking of carapacian footsteps fades away into the distance before you saunter over. Running isn’t an option. She may be watching, and no matter how ravenous you are, she will never see you desperate.  
  
Upon examination, dinner looks like shit on a shingle; when you poke at it, your finger hits a chunk of what seems to be beef and sinks in with a _sqush_ and a pathetic little ooze of gravy. There’s no smell to it, which is probably a mercy. Odds are it would reek if there was. At any rate, it beats the hell out of tern or gull or cat. There’s no point in restraining yourself anymore, so you give in to your hunger and dig in barehanded, wolfing your meal down by the fistful.  
  
You are so focused on stuffing your face that you don’t even notice the Condesce watching you until she laughs, low and contemptuous. You stop in mid-bite, directing your most baleful glare at the small window in the door of your cell. Her eyes reflect what little light there is, like a hunting lion; it reminds you of the gargantuan clowder that formerly lurked in your basement.  
  
“Fuck off,” you growl around a vile-tasting mouthful. There is gravy spotting your chin and clinging to your fingers. As etiquette is currently taking a backseat to just about everything, you give approximately zero shits about this.  
  
“Nah,” she says, “don’t think I will. Lady’s gotta keep an ocular organ on her assets.”  
  
You snarl, wordless in your loathing. She simply looks amused. “Eat up, guppy. I got uses for you yet, and you ain’t gettin’ more for a while.” You flip her the bird and turn your back to the door so that you might eat in relative peace. Her heels don’t click away down the corridor until long after you’ve finished, sucked the gravy off your fingers, and curled up to sleep.  
  
Midway through a vague and nebulous dream of falling stars, some shithead blasts an air horn into your cell. You wake flailing, scream a few choice epithets at the rapidly retreating horn-blower, and try vainly to go back to sleep. It’s no use; you’re too rattled and boiling with unwanted adrenaline.  
  
No food for you the next morning. Or maybe it’s evening; on Derse, day and night are indistinct, fading into one another the way words blur together on your tongue when you’ve had a few. When you doze off again, the same goddamn horn goes off and you crack the back of your head on the wall behind you as you rear up in waking. Against the drumbeat of your throbbing skull, you gamely give resting another try, but half an hour later you’re jolted from semi-consciousness by the now familiar canned-air howl. You abandon your attempt while wishing an eternity of torment on the son of a bitch who is keeping you up. A vat of acid, maybe, or something with sharks.  
  
After that, you give up on sleep entirely and walk the eight-by-eight border of your cell, roaming back and forth like a trapped tiger. It’s all you can do. You pace until fatigue and hunger get to you; maybe it’s a day later, maybe an hour, you don’t know. There’s a lot you don’t know. Your knees buckle as you ease yourself down, and you crumple to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. As your head droops, your hair flops into your face, and your commanding view of the grimy night-purple floor is obscured by a sandy blur.  
  
God, you’re fucking tired; so tired, in fact, that you don’t notice the Batterwitch come in until her stiletto-clad feet intrude on your field of vision. To your shame, you don’t even have the energy to spit on her fucking shoes. Instead you manage to lift your head a little as she crouches down, a few greasy strands of hair clinging to your cheek. The tines of her trident ring authoritatively on the stone of the floor as she supports herself on her weapon.  
  
“Cut you a deal, gillfrond,” she says, leaning in close. Her breath smells of wine and fish, cloying. “You don’t act like a beach, and I don’t let you keel over and die. Hell, I might even take you for a walk sometime if you play reel nice. You stay nasty, you _fucked_.” The pupils of her eyes have expanded to fat black ellipses in the gloom; it makes her look eager, almost hungry. “We clear?”  
  
You weigh your options. There aren’t many. Either you stay here and rot while she does what she likes with the rest of the universe, or you fake it ‘til you make it and maybe get a chance to run.  
  
Fuck it.  
  
“Yeah,” you mumble through chapped, dry lips. “Yeah, okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written as a bonus round fill for the Homestuck Shipping World Cup; instead of leaving it as is, I opted to rework and expand upon it. My thanks to narcoleptictruancy on Dreamwidth for providing the prompt.


End file.
